Archive of posts with tag 'SaaS applications'

The opening keynote from Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins started by pointing out that this was the company’s 30th year hosting a version Cisco Live, emphasizing just how much has changed in the tech world since the conference was born in 1989 as “Networkers.” (Shoutout to our intern @JarrettLee828 for leveraging that bit of knowledge for a prize during the show)...

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Delivering visibility is central to everything we do at AppNeta. Not only does our platform allow enterprise IT to see into all corners of their network, but transparency and clarity is central to how we operate as a company, too. It’s fitting, therefore, that AppNeta was named a Visionary in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Performance Monitoring and...

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It’s a foregone conclusion that the future of enterprise business rests in the cloud. This is especially true when considering what a huge role cloud migration has played within the enterprise space over just the past few years: Spending on cloud computing has grown at 4.5 times the rate of IT spending since 2009, and is expected to grow at...

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The primary aim of digital transformation -- a phrase that lacks a clear definition, but encompasses swapping out legacy tech for the latest cloud apps -- is to streamline processes across the enterprise. There’s the promise of faster solutions, more connectivity between remote offices, and the ability for business to scale up with ease (and at minimal cost). Done successfully,...

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“Cloud-native” technology has likely come across your radar screen at some point in the last few years, but what does it mean, exactly? There’s a good explainer here on cloud-native computing, a concept that runs through any cloud service. Any applications, architectures, platforms and processes that work toward increasing IT’s ability to change and reduce unpredictability can be described as...

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Software as a service (SaaS) tools and applications are now ubiquitous. Research firm Forrester puts it simply: “If you aren’t using SaaS broadly, you’re falling behind.” Why? Because data shows that SaaS “is increasingly the foundation for business opportunities.” Sounds like the perfect solution. But SaaS comes with a unique challenge: The rapid rise of on-demand software services has created...

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For some time, there’s been a quiet war going on between the top three providers of enterprise ERP software—SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Lately, that war has been taking place on a new front: the cloud. All three major players have pushed out cloud versions of their flagship ERP software within the last few years, with varying degrees of success. Let’s...

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Imagine being under the microscope, while also shouldering the responsibility of company-wide productivity. That’s IT in a nutshell, with the help desk as the front line for any dissatisfaction or service interruptions that end users experience. In the past, with on-premises solutions, being the enterprise hero who could solve a problem quickly was difficult. Now, as organizations shift to modern,...

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Is SaaS sprawl creeping in to your enterprise environment? Orchestration might be a good goal for 2018. Building an orchestration environment means that IT’s resources, services and workflows are available to users in a self-service way. So for cloud deployments, a cloud orchestration system means that there’s a specific workflow to follow when a business user requests a common task,...

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G Suite is still the underdog compared to Microsoft Office 365. What’s keeping enterprises away? With Google dominating the consumer space, introducing it into the workplace seems like a natural fit for employee experience and productivity. The problem is, enterprises are ingrained in the Microsoft stack, and have been building entire workflows around Office products for years now. Even cavemen...

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Here’s a philosophical question for network engineers everywhere: What does stability mean, anyway? The inimitable Ethan Banks offers some time-tested, practical tips on what makes for lasting network stability today. One important piece of advice is to control your impulses to play around with network features and functionality. Don’t experiment in a production environment, and don’t go rogue just for...

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When companies move ahead on implementing ServiceNow, it's not just for a better ticketing system. The SaaS application claims to replace unstructured work patterns with intelligent workflows, improve service levels, energize employees and enable enterprises to work at light speed. That’s a tall order, even for a powerful platform that automates and connects workflows and disconnected databases. While the appeal...

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Gmail is an unquestionable titan. 20% of all emails sent worldwide are sent using the Gmail platform, and a total of 1.2 billion users. This email dominance is reflected in the enterprise versions of its applications, known collectively as G Suite. Gmail and the other G Suite apps are now gaining ground for business use. Over three million business customers...

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The annual AWS re:invent conference wrapped up this week, with more than 43,000 attendees gathering. Some hot topics included AI and machine learning, but the bigger picture revolved around Amazon’s work to continue its public cloud dominance, according to this account. Microsoft and Google continue to work to take market share away, though AWS had a lot of announcements to...

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IT ROLE: Steve Aichelmann, senior director of IT infrastructure NEEDS: Improving internal end-user experience, especially for VoIP RESULTS: Proactive issue resolution, view of performance at 31 global locations As a leading data center provider to just under 1,000 customers globally—including 175 of the Fortune 1000—CyrusOne is known for its excellent customer service, enduring customer relationships and high customer satisfaction levels. It manages data...

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Happy December! First up, a recent survey finds that IaaS use nearly doubled from 2014 to 2016, and that enterprises are continuing to charge ahead with all kinds of cloud use. Multicloud use is already pretty well-established, with 72% of companies using between two and five cloud providers. We predict that staying on top of all these cloud instances and...

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Skype for Business has an uptime guarantee of 99.9%, which is just about as good as you can ask for in this era of SaaS and cloud apps, right? Dealing with about 8 hours of downtime a year doesn’t seem terrible. However, designing your Skype for Business deployment specifically to meet the minimum network requirements to achieve uptime isn’t the...

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 It’s conventional wisdom that nothing worthwhile in life comes cheap and easy. With regards to unified communications and collaboration, that’s pretty true. One frequent promise of SaaS applications has been cost savings compared to on-premises tools. But that only happens when IT is vigilant about SaaS pricing, and savvy about which apps cost more and why. This is a common...

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It’s usually a great sign for a business if IT needs to scale up a particular technology quickly—maybe sales are growing, or new employees are coming on board, or a new product shows a lot of promise in the market. It could be a combination of all three. Expectations are usually pretty high from the business side that IT can...

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The internal help desk can be a very busy place for a business. IT is under pressure from users to fix any application or network problems quickly, and now also has to depend on the providers of those apps and networks to get problems solved. So how do you measure how your help desk is performing? Figure out the metrics...

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In these days of SaaS applications, the help desk has to be efficient, knowledgeable and able to close tickets fast. Nobody likes waiting, and when your users are experiencing a technology problem, they like waiting even less. You can do a lot proactively to make sure that users spend as little time on hold as possible, but that’s only one...

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APIs build bridges between applications. Now that companies are moving quickly to cloud-based and SaaS applications, these APIs are a lifesaver. Just one application can have any number of APIs connecting into it, creating a web of communication among important business-critical applications. This API economy has become another facet of modern infrastructure that IT teams has to manage. An EMA...

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As predicted, it’s prediction time for 2018! The year ahead will bring more technology advancements, and also advancements for the people using that technology as they figure out what will work best for their users. Cloud infrastructures come in a lot of different flavors these days, but they all need to perform well and consistently if they're going to succeed....

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Long, long ago, when computer systems of the old glass house-encased Big Iron variety failed, the situation was often cryptically described as an “abend”—a word derived from an IBM error message meaning “ABnormal END.” While the abend was usually accompanied by other codes or messages, it was not much to go on. Data center operators had to do a lot...

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 Cloud application adoption is a force that can’t be stopped. And honestly, do any IT leaders really want to stop it? There are a lot of benefits to using cloud and SaaS applications. When you move your apps from on-premises to the cloud, life in IT is supposed to get a lot easier. You enjoy faster user adoption, minimize performance...

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Service-level agreements (SLAs) are becoming increasingly familiar territory for the average IT leader. Unfortunately, the number of SaaS SLAs is sprawling across IT organizations to the point that it’s nearly impossible to manage them all. Business-critical applications are increasingly moving to the cloud and it’s only a matter of time before bandwidth resources start to succumb to the pressure—if yours...

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Salesforce is an integral part of many companies’ sales organizations. It’s a SaaS application that’s billed per head, but the selling point for businesses  is the time savings that sales reps can achieve with the organization and optimization of account data. Alas, in a world of app integrations, time savings is not guaranteed, and a business-critical application like Salesforce comes with...

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The promise of cloud and SaaS was supposed to be that it’s hands-off for IT and won’t take up internal resources. But for Office 365 at least, that’s not the case. One study found that 70% of enterprises using Office 365 report latency issues on a weekly basis, and 33% report them daily. This story has more details about the...

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So you've transitioned your company to SaaS. What a relief. No more license tracking, no more deploying patches and updates and helping users who have problems with an application. The SaaS vendor will handle all your problems, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. The vendor is supporting dozens, hundreds or thousands of clients, and chances are you aren't their biggest...

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Team members are not always in the same office, or they may be on the road at customer or supplier sites. Companies are dealing with a shortage of critical skills, so they hire people regardless of their location. Businesses overall are increasing their number of remote offices and locations, taking advantage of modern technology that makes it easier to be...

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The need for collaboration tools like chat and video apps is greater than ever, for a few big reasons: Businesses are increasing their numbers of remote locations quickly Companies have recognized that it’s important to hire the best talent regardless of location. Employees often travel on business or choose to work remotely. Customers and suppliers are actively involved in the design of...

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One morning last week, I came into the office to find that the folks in our Boston office couldn’t consistently access Salesforce.com. But of course I already knew this. I had gotten an alert from AppNeta Performance Manager that the app wasn’t functioning correctly, so I could quickly troubleshoot the issue. As Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at AppNeta, it’s definitely...

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Synthetic monitoring is a modern way to see the performance of today’s SaaS and web applications and networks. It uses scripting to emulate the paths that end users take as they experience an application. Why We Need Best Practices for Synthetics Synthetic monitoring provides IT staff with performance context for business-critical SaaS and web apps. Except for company-wide deployments, IT...

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We’re slowly getting used to cloud and SaaS applications in every area of our lives—including at work. Even huge enterprises are starting to move important business apps to the cloud, like Office 365 and Google Docs. That shift affects IT and end users a lot, as both adjust to using and supporting new, cloud-based tools. Sometimes those SaaS applications lack...

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The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that it actually exists. And whether you’ve realized it or not, cloud services are a problem for your IT department. Even if you feel like you have a solid grasp of cloud technology and the nuances of making a cloud purchase, business leaders don’t share the same confidence. Nearly 80% feel...

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In this modern world of IT, you’ve probably got some new colleagues in your life—namely, the cloud and SaaS providers who now hold your infrastructure in their hands. These business relationships—yes, they’re technology-based, but cloud and SaaS are business models—will become as important to your IT team and your company as the hardware and software you used to install. Once...

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For those of us who’ve worked in IT for a long time, we know disruptive change when we see it. And cloud and SaaS have brought about the biggest change for IT teams we’ve seen in many years. These trends have turned traditional IT on its head, and that includes the way IT researches, chooses, purchases and then supports the...

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If you are having network issues, the downstream effects are going to show up in the end-user experience of your business-critical applications. According to an Aberdeen Group survey of 158 organizations,, app performance issues have a direct impact on the business, including declined employee productivity (64%), lost revenue opportunities (41%), decreased customer satisfaction (61%) and damage to brand reputation (39%)....

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